Solar Cooker - Back to the Drawing Board

So, with the insulation issue I have decided to scrap version 1.0. On to 2.0.

This one will be based on the "Minimum Solar Cooker " I saw over at SolarCooking.org

Due to the recent birthday of our 5 year old, and the purchase of a new vacuum, I seem to have plenty of cardboard around to do the trick.

I'm going for an inch of air-space insulation on each side and the bottom as well as filling in some of the airspace with foil covered cardboard in an attempt to radiate the heat back in, or at least prevent it from escaping - as mentioned in the "upgrades" section in the link above. (That and I already have it partially assembled and did not foil the inside of the outer box).

I'll also be using a plastic oven cooking bag instead of the glass pane (at least initially). I still intend to add the "Heaven's flame" reflector set up, but I'll give it a go with the lid in the instructions first.

I'm also thinking, that a good, simple way to test it would be to try the solar "Beer Bread" recipe found at CookingWithTheSun.com.

Insulation; Apparently a Must Have for a Solar Cooker

While I scour the internet looking for resources of cheap ideas to get my solar oven cranked up as high as she can go, one common topic keeps popping up; Insulation.

Now insulation is something that I naively ignored in my very basic solar oven, assuming that with the summer temps here in the desert, it would not be an issue. It appears I was dead wrong. As soon as the sun drifts behind the shade of a tree in the late afternoon - BAM! the temp in my solar oven drops below the 150 degree (F) bottom end threshold for my thermometer.

A simple foil lined outer box seems to be sufficient, with at least a 1/2 in gap between the inner and outer boxes (bottom too). Air alone seems to work just fine, but others have filled the gap with sand, dry soil, newspaper and "gasp", Styrofoam.

My mission as it stands right now will continue to be to see how hot we can crank up this solar oven, and I believe the next upgrade will be fitting a "Heaven's Flame" style reflector to it..

But food for thought .... if you intend to do any real cooking beyond reheating, the consensus seems to be that insulation is of the utmost importance. Funny how right now that still appears to be last on my list.

So, I Thinks it's About time I Look into This Solar Cooking Stuff

Well, I have been looking into the whole solar cooking thing for a while - reading the blogs, looking at the pictures (both the DIY and "professional grade" versions) watching the youtube videos ... well you get the point.

It usually boiled down to the same old excuse ... who has the time.

But, now it's summer in the desert. I'm a cheap S.O.B,and when it's over 100 degrees outside, I feel a little silly at dinner time when my oven and my AC just seem to be duking it out ... and the loser is usually my wallet.

Oh yeah, and then I saw this ...

That's my grill before noon on a late June day here in Nevada ... over 120 degrees... and, in case you're wondering, no, it's not on.

Crazy, right?

So after a quick refresher of some online DIY solar ovens - I started with a serrated knife, a cardboard box and a picture frame what already had glass in it, all found in my garage- Literally a couple of minutes later I had the beginnings of a solar oven.

I had to wait a couple of hours to grab the thermometer on our family grocery shopping trip to see what was what.

Of course there's a bit more to do, but I was/am curious what happens if I approach this a single step at a time. I like to think we're off to a good start.

I checked it about an hour/ hour and a half after tossing the thermometer in there and, frankly, I was a little surprised.

Just in case you can't read it, that's 200 degrees - and it's just a regular old box and a pane of glass. So we're all on the same page, it's 99 degrees outside right now, but I'm still pretty excited.

Next up we'll try painting the inside black, and/ or adding some cardboard and aluminum foil reflectors. Let's see how how we can get this solar oven!